22.12.11

French philosopher reflects on what makes us human

In a brief excerpt, Jacques Derrida reflects on what constitutes human identity, and challenges our assumptions of sovereignty in the animal kingdom (link via Brain Pickings):

None of the traits by which the most authorized philosophy or culture has thought it possible to recognize this ‘proper of man’ — none of them is, in all rigor, the exclusive reserve of what we humans call human. Either because some animals also possess such traits, or because man does not possess it as surely as is claimed.